Dr Mosley read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University as an undergraduate, before deciding that he preferred working in libraries to laboratories. After studying for an MPhil in History & Philosophy in Science, he embarked upon a PhD in the history of early modern astronomy. Before joining the History Department at Swansea, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, with an affiliation to the Cambridge University Department of History and Philosophy of Science. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2008.

Dr Mosley served as a Council Member of the British Society for the History of Science from 2006 to 2009, and is currently the Reviews Editor of the British Journal for the History of Science. He is also a member of MEMO, Swansea's Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Current research

Dr Mosley's research is focused on the mathematical culture of early modern Europe. He is particularly interested in the relationship between texts, images, and instruments, in the formation and evolution of disciplinary categories, and in the connections between physical-mathematical and humanistic scholarship. He is currently working, with Professor Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge) and Professor M. A. Granada (Barcelona), on an edition and translation of Christoph Rothmann's treatise on the comet of 1585. He is also writing a history of cosmography.

Principal Publications

Books and journals

• Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• (ed.), Studies in History & Philosophy of Science, Part A, 38.2 (2007), special issue: 'Objects, texts and images in the history of science' 

Book-chapter and Journal Articles

• ‘Vincenzo Maria Coronelli’s Atlante Veneto and the Diagrammatic Tradition of Cosmography’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 42 (2011), 27-53
• 'The role of the cosmographer in the sixteenth century: A preliminary study', Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 59 (2009), 423-439
• 'Early modern cosmography: Finé’s Sphaera Mundi in content and context', in Alexander Marr, ed., The Worlds of Oronce Fine: Mathematics, Instruments, and the Book in Renaissance France, St. Andrews Studies in Art History 2 (Stamford: Paul Watkins Publishing, 2009), 114-136
• 'The Reformation of Astronomy', in Bridget Heal & Ole Peter Grell, eds., The Impact of the European Reformation: Princes, Clergy and People (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 231-249
• 'Spheres and texts on spheres: the book-instrument relationship and an armillary sphere in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science', in L. Taub & F. Willmoth, eds., The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and Interpretations, to Celebrate the 60th Anniversary of R. S. Whipple's Gift to the University of Cambridge, (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 2006), 301-318
• 'Objects of Knowledge: Mathematics and Models in Sixteenth-Century Cosmology and Astronomy', in S. Kusukawa & I. Maclean, eds., Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images and Instruments in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 193-216
• (with N. Jardine & K. Tybjerg), 'Epistolary culture, editorial practices, and the propriety of Tycho’s Astronomical Letters', Journal for the History of Astronomy, 34 (2003), 421-451

Online publications

• Entries including ' Armillary Spheres', 'Calendars and Calendar Reform', 'Early Modern Books', 'Mathematical Techniques: The Celestial Sphere', 'Regiomontanus', 'Sacrobosco', 'Tycho Brahe', in Starry Messenger: An Electronic History of Astronomy

Recent conference papers and invited lectures:

• ‘Past Portents Predict: Astrology and Cometary Historiae in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Celestial Novelties, Science and Politics on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (1540-1630), Museo Galileo, Florence, September 2011
•  ‘Cosmography and Cartography: Their Relationship Revisited’, Maps & Society, The Warburg Institute, London, April 2010
•  ‘ “Trusting in Tycho”: Kepler's use of Tycho's data in the Astronomia Nova (1609)’, Special Session 9, ‘Marking the 400th Anniversary of Kepler's Astronomia Nova’, International Astronomical Union’s XXVIIth General Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, August 2009
•  ‘Vincenzo Maria Coronelli and the Diagrammatic Tradition in Cosmography’, Terminology and typology of astronomical images, 1450-1650, University of Cambridge, July 2009
•  ‘Getting Back to Basics: Spherical Astronomy and Cosmography in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Reading the Heavens: The Crawford Collection in the History of Astronomy, The Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, April 2009
•  ‘Heaven on Earth: Cosmography and the Divine’, EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and History of Science Seminar), School of Advanced Study, University of London, April 2009
•  ‘Kepler’s other defence of Tycho: Scipio Chiaramonti’s Antitycho of 1621, and Kepler’s Hyperaspistes of 1625’, Kepler 2008: From Tübingen to Sagan, University of Zielona Góra, Poland, June 2008
•  ‘The Cosmographer’s Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study’, Current Issues in Early Modern Cosmography, Centre for History of Science, Ghent University, Belgium, May 2008
•  ‘B(e)aring the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Republic of Letters’, Republic of Letters Seminar, All Souls, Oxford, February 2007
•  ‘Heaven and Earth in the Late-Sixteenth Century: Tycho and Kepler on the Sub- and Supra-Lunary’, Nouveau Ciel, Nouvelle Terre: La révolution copernicienne dans l'Allemagne de la Réforme 1530-1630, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, June 2006

Principal research awards, fellowships, and prizes

• Visiting Fellow, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge University, and Wolfson College, Cambridge, Michaelmas Term 2007
• Junior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge, 2000-2004
• Jane Eliza Procter Fellow, Princeton University, 1999-2000